Julio González

Galerie de France, Paris

Private Collection, Paris (acquired from the above in the 1980s)

Private Collection (acquired from the above)

Erika Billiter, 'Zeichen im Raum', in Artis, Konstanz, April 1970, another cast illustrated p. 24

Marco Züblin, 'González: nuove materie, nuovi spazi', in Corriere del Ticino, Lugano, 25th October 1983, another cast illustrated

Margit Rowell, 'Metal Draw in Space: González at Guggenheim', in Art/World, no. 7, New York, March 1983, another cast illustrated p. 1

Jörn Merkert, Julio González. Catalogue raisonné des sculptures, Milan, 1987, no. 167, another cast illustrated p. 173

The late 1920s and early 1930s constitute the single most important period of González’s career and the years in which he crystallised the unique sculptural language that he would describe as ‘drawing in space’. Influenced by his close collaborations with Picasso and the Surrealist movement that was beginning to gain ground among the Parisian avant-garde, González pioneered a style of sculpture in which volume is suggested through openness and by the interplay between linear forms; the figures and the space they are set in become inseparable. A playful blend of abstraction and figuration, La Chevelure epitomises the artist’s mature style and relates closely to some of his major works from the period including the celebrated Tête miroir the original model of which was owned by Christian Zervos, who was one of the first supporters of the sculptor, regularly publishing his works in the Cahiers d’Art. The distinctive metal fronds that indicate hair and the delicate curve that delineate the face are also repeated in his larger-scale Maternité (Tate, Liverpool). The joy of the present work is in its remarkable simplicity; using only a few formal elements, González nonetheless succeeds in conjuring his subject – a full head of hair – in a work that exudes character and energy.

Describing the works of this period Brigitte Leal writes: ‘the series of linear sculptures created between 1930 and 1935 show how the artist, thanks to his great skill as a metalworker, invented a mode of expression specific to metal, a writing in space […] that produced hollowed-out forms, reduced to geometric and abstract outlines […]. La Chevelure constitutes the apogee of this process of abstraction […] the cluster of thorny hooks at the top of a perfect circle formed by La Chevelure […] are striking for their formal perfection which are in the same vein as Miró’s ideograms whilst alluding to a world charged with a Picassian rapacity’ (B. Leal, in Julio González (exhibition catalogue), Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2007, p. 128, translated from French).